by JJ Pike
“I can hose this down when we get back to the compound,” he said.
“Hop in.” Sitting beside your suspect, with no opportunity to watch their gestures, wasn’t the optimal way to interrogate them, but it was half an hour of one on one time. Jo was ready. Start off with questions about his life. Everyone loves to talk about themselves. Fastest way to get his guard down. She eased around the parking lot and headed for the freeway. “Where did you learn to treat a tension pneumothorax? I thought you were a bench scientist.”
“Army,” he said.
Lie number two. If he’d been in the Army, he’d have known what she did. There were fewer complications, less bleeding, and higher success rates if you went into the lungs via the fourth or fifth intercostal space, rather than the second. The Army was the leading authority on treating field wounds and had revolutionized medical practices. Two issues: where had he really trained and why lie about it? “Regiment?”
“Can we cut to the chase, Jo?”
She hadn’t been expecting that. She waited. He waited. He was fishing. She smiled, but only on the inside. He was good. Definitely had some basic behavioral training, but he was no expert. She wasn’t going to fill the gap for him. Let him come to her.
Michael cleared his throat. “You want to know if I’m going to stay around and use up all of your supplies. Well, let me put those concerns to rest. I’ve seen what you have to hand and know, in spite of what Jim had to say about me being a useful set of hands, that you don’t need an extra mouth to feed.”
She hadn’t expected that, either. Nor could she give him an excuse to leave. “You’re a friend of Alice’s. I don’t think she’d be happy if we kicked you out.”
Michael harrumphed.
“You’re not wrong. We do have limited supplies, but time is on our side. There haven’t been any runs on stores. People up here aren’t panicking. We can stock up and add you to our head count. If, when Alice gets back, the majority vote is that you have to leave, then you’ll have to leave.”
“I think I’d rather move on now,” he said. “That way there’s no conflict and no hard feelings.”
Jo shook her head. How did he keep snatching control of the narrative away from her? “Jim’s not wrong,” she said. “We need help getting rid of all the plastics and making the compound secure.”
“Anything else?” He was looking right at her. She kept her eyes on the road. “Anything else you need my help to get rid of?”
Well, that was that. He knew. She needed to rethink her strategy. She couldn’t just park him at Jim’s house and take care of Arthur’s body herself. If she was going to keep him zipped up and not blabbing to the wrong people, she was going to need to rope him in.
Chapter Ten
#notdead
#notguilty
#notMELT
Alice made it into a chant, a cheer, a way to get the memories to stop. She didn’t want to see Angelina’s crown of flowers melting on her face, or her boss Jake tumbling into the pit, or the world crashing down around her ears.
#notdead #notdead #notdead
The kids would understand, if she explained why she was going with a hashtag that was so “emo.” Did they say that anymore? She couldn’t remember. One of them had used it all the time. Oh, Paul. He’d said it about Petra, much to her annoyance. But he wasn’t wrong. Petra had been very “emo” when she was in her mid-teens.
They’d prefer something light or offbeat. They’d laughed themselves silly when they’d convinced her that that LOL meant “lots of love.” She’d signed her texts like that for weeks. It had been Mimi who told her it meant “laugh out loud.” They enjoyed yanking her chain. Another good idiom, except for the “chains” part. She could do without that.
#notdead
Say it again. #notdead #notdead #notdead You’re in Manhattan, not Guatemala. While it’s true you’re trapped and possibly breathing in MELT, which you helped create, you’re #notdead.
That was the important one. She and Grandma Margaret—Grandmimi? Margaret? Mom? Mimi? What were you supposed to call your mother-in-law when you were both grown adults, anyway?—had that exact conversation when Mimi was in the hospital, hooked up to a billion machines, battling cancer. Alice went every day after work to visit her mother-in-law. They fell into a rhythm.
“Want me to bring you anything tomorrow?” said Alice.
“New body.” Margaret said the same thing each afternoon.
“Done.” Alice smiled at her mother-in-law. The woman was unflinching. Not an ounce of self-pity in her, even as her body was pumped full of toxic chemicals designed to kill the cancer. “Anything else?”
“Winning lottery ticket.”
“What would you do if you won the lottery?”
“Stop waiting. Stop being afraid. Stop thinking there’s time. I’m alive. I want to live it up until the day I die.”
Alice nodded. If only she could be that brave. “What else? Tell me the details, the places you will go, the things you will eat, the adventures you’ll have. Tell me stories of Margaret’s Magnificent Journey.” This was where it got interesting. Mimi switched up her answers each day, painting Alice a picture of her ideal life. She’d travel, she’d look up all her old friends, go on a date with her childhood sweetheart (“Yes, he’s still alive. No, I don’t know where he lives. Sure, he’s probably a codger, but who knows, he might have aged well. Like cheese, only less stinky.”)
“So?” said Alice. “Tell me, tell me. What are the lottery plans of the day?”
Margaret opened her eyes. She was doing her best not to let her see just how bad it was, but Alice could tell she felt like the inside of a drain pipe that hadn’t been cleaned in a hundred years.
“Let’s see. If I won the lottery today, I’d take Paul and Petra to Paris. They crave sophistication. They’re city dwellers. They’d follow you to the ends of the Earth, which is why they go to that ridiculous cabin of yours, but if you asked them to sample the tasting menu at Nobu or have a three-course meal at Per Se, they’d be thrilled.”
A month before the diagnosis, that would have sounded like a critique of her parenting, but Margaret’s cancer had brought them both some clarity. Margaret had been part mother to her. She deserved to say what she wanted to say. It came from a place of love. She adored the grandkids and wanted what was best for them.
“Where would you take Midge?” She’d skipped over Aggie, but only because she knew the answer was going to take them someplace she didn’t want to go.
Mimi smiled. It was too much that her mother-in-law was kind to her in that moment. She had to look away. They both knew they’d have to go there eventually.
“Midge loves animals. Any animals. All animals. She needs something to care for, a place to pour all that love. She’s the baby, so she’s used to getting her own way, but that little one of yours is a force to be reckoned with. One day, she’s going to be a regular Doctor Doolittle. Pippy is her love right now…”
Alice knew what she was going to say. How could she explain? Midge couldn’t have a dog. Ever. The dogs had kept her up that tree. If only they’d gone away, she wouldn’t have been there when the man came. Don’t think about him. Anything but him.
Think about Midge. No. She wants a dog. That’s no good.
Think about eating a fancy meal in a five-star restaurant with the twins. That wouldn’t do either. The last upscale meal she’d had was with Stephen McKan. She couldn’t think about him. He was the past. She needed to keep that door shut. Don’t think about him. Don’t think about the twins.
Which left Aggie. The tears streamed down her face. Aggie had been eight, just like her. She’d locked her in the shed out back. Not the same as the shack she’d been shackled in, but close enough. She’d traumatized her middle daughter. She would never outlive the shame.
“Think about something you can bear to think about, not something that sends you into a panic,” said Dr. Moore. “Our job here is to free you from the past.”
&
nbsp; What she hadn’t told Dr. Moore or Bill or any living human was she’d never really come down from that tree. That was the last place she’d been safe. Her parents were dead, her sister had been abducted, but the worst was yet to come. If she could only stay up the tree, what came next might never have happened.
She had picked out the dogs’ leader. He hung at the back of the pack, making sure their flank was covered. Getting him to come close was the hardest part. Her food was gone, she had no lure, she had to use herself as bait.
She’d crept down the branches, looking for that place where she might be within reach if only they leapt high enough, but would still be able to swing away and up into the canopy. She whispered the way she’d seen Papa do when he wanted to pet one of them. He was soft in the head, Mama said, always giving them scraps and tempting them to come closer.
“Here you go,” she crooned. “Come to me. Let me stroke your lovely fur. Let me give you yummy treats. Let me throw my knife at you and chase you all away.” As long as the tone was sweet, they didn’t care what the words were. “My knife is sharp. You will know in a minute how sharp. Come on. Come closer, that’s right, closer still.”
The pack leader had her in his sights. His eyes were trained on her, his shoulders up, as he slowly padded towards her. She didn’t know what the signal might be to charge her, but she kept scanning the group in case there was a change in the rhythm of their endless pacing.
He launched himself at her with such speed and grace she barely managed to let loose her knife. It was a pathetic aim with no power and it missed its mark, plunging into the ground below. She reached for the closest branch, but her hand grasped a fistful of ivy rather than tree and she was scrambling and grabbing and kicking, the dogs’ breath on her heels, their teeth close to her skin.
She heaved herself back up the tree, her heart beating too fast, the sweat pouring down her sides. She’d almost been eaten by the dogs and now she had no food and no knife and no way to get down. She hugged the tree, wishing her mama was there to chase them off with a broom. They’d been more afraid of humans in the village, hadn’t they? Or were these different dogs? Wild dogs? Dogs who knew they only had to wait for her to fall asleep and lose her balance and then she’d be their dinner for days to come.
Alicia took off her cardigan and used the arms to bind herself to the tree. “There, dogs. You can’t get me now, even if I do fall asleep.” She waited and watched, hoping they’d grow tired, but it was she who was fading. She fell asleep astride one branch, with both arms cradling another. When she woke, the dogs were gone and the man was there.
It would have been better to have been eaten by dogs, but she hadn’t known that. Nothing could have prepared her for what the man had in store.
“It’s Aggie who’s the tough one to buy for.” Mimi broke into her nightmarish thoughts.
Alice braced herself. She deserved whatever Mimi had to say to her. She’d whipped Aggie’s legs with a leather belt, just as her legs had been whipped. She hadn’t known she was doing it, but that was no excuse. Terrible things happen to people all over the world. That doesn’t mean they all go on to do terrible things. Most of them don’t. Most of them aren’t made monstrous by the monstrous things that happened to them. Sadly, Alice wasn’t most people. She was broken in a way that had let the evil in. Dr. Moore told her she was too hard on herself, but she knew she wasn’t. She’d hurt her daughter. What could be worse?
“Take her to the Everglades,” said Mimi. “Aggie’s your outdoorsy type. If we could get her into some Nature Conservancy program for the summer, that would be ideal. Better yet, send her off with her dad. Let them learn how to track bears using their scat or trap rabbits with a stick and a piece of string or release rehabilitated eagles and falcons into the wild. That would make them both deliriously happy.”
Alice nodded. She wasn’t wrong. Bill loved Aggie and Aggie loved Bill and there was nothing they liked better than to be outside. “How does that bring us closer?”
Mimi put her hand over Alice’s. “Give her time. Let her find her way back to you. By showing you can let her be with her dad, without you having to be a part of it, you’re letting her know that you care about her happiness more than you care about your own.”
Alice dropped her head. She adored her children. She wanted to do right by them. That’s why she left them with Bill. It was too dangerous for her to be around them for too long. They reminded her of being little. And being little was bad. Very, very, very bad. Being little always meant there was someone bigger. Bigger people were evil. Bigger people were him.
He was there at her side, his rancid breath on her neck and hands on her body. Alice turned her head and commanded him to leave. Don’t think about that now. No need to go down that road. Don’t think about the shack or the bad man or the smell of his sweat or the sound of him turning the latch and coming into the room with no door. That way lies madness. Get back to the happy memories. GrandMimi and Thanksgiving and chicks and travel plans.
Alice licked her lips. They were cracked and bleeding. She was severely dehydrated. She tried to remember the calculation of the countdown to death. It was measured in threes, wasn’t it? Three minutes without air: dead. Three days without water: probably dead. Three weeks…was it weeks or was it months…without food?
She had climbed down the tree willingly. She’d even taken his hand willingly.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Alicia.”
“Do you want to come with me and have some hot chocolate, Alicia?”
Alice nodded. Who didn’t want hot chocolate? Only a fool.
They walked so far her feet bled. He offered to carry her, but she wasn’t a baby. She would be brave, the way Papa wanted her to be brave. When they reached the man’s house, she was cast down, but she tried not to show it. He was poor. Poorer even than the poorest people who lived on the outskirts of her village. Strange that he has such clean clothes and a well-trimmed mustache. Perhaps he wanted to look as if he wasn’t poor. Papa said we should treat all people as our equals, because we are equals in the eyes of God.
The door opened. No one could live in such a place. The floorboards were broken. There were leaves everywhere. She looked up at the man to try to understand what he meant by bringing her here, but he pushed her through the door and slammed it shut behind them.
It wasn’t right. There was no stove, no fire, no provisions. There was going to be no chocolate. She looked around, hoping for a way out, but the only way back to the forest was through the front door and that meant passing him and he was so big and strong and angry, she knew she’d never make it. She backed up against the wall.
The man went to the corner. There was a duffel bag. It was so dark in the shack, she hadn’t seen it. Behind the duffel bag was a sleeping bag. He grabbed them, then gripped her by the arm and took her to the room in the back. There was no door and no windows. The roof was open to the sky, which must have been where the leaves came from.
He threw the bag to the ground, unfurled the sleeping bag, and pushed her down. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a hammer. Alicia scrambled back, like a frog who’d had its legs broken and turned upside down, and tried to become one with the wooden wall at her back.
He took a piece of metal from the bag. It looked like half a loop on a flat, metal plate. Alicia had never seen anything like it. He retrieved four nails and went to work hammering the loop into the wall. When he was done, he retrieved a chain from the bag and attached it to the loop. Then a cuff, which he attached to her ankle, locking it with the tiniest key she had ever seen. The loop was attached to the chain which was attached to the cuff which was attached to her ankle. Alicia didn’t understand.
The man didn’t speak. He left her there and went outside. Alicia tried the seam on the cuff, but it was locked tight. A tremendous bang made her jump. He was on the other side of the wall, hammering. She’d seen Papa do something similar to make sure the nails were flattened and didn’t catc
h anyone’s foot and make them bleed. The hammering went on for a long time.
When he came back, he threw the hammer in the bag, threw the bag over his shoulder and slammed the door on his way out.
Alicia didn’t make a sound.
The sounds of the forest had never frightened her. She knew what noises a small animal would make, what noises a human. The branches creaking in the wind were never ghosts or ghouls, the crunch of leaves nothing to fear, the sound of the river a melody to bid her to sleep.
